Laura Cortese, Kris Drever, Nora Brown, & Eli West live stream
This Sunday, January 12th, at 3pm, enjoy a wintery broadcast of Laura Cortese’s Acoustic Evenings, recorded March 24, 2024, in Belsele, Belgium, at Muziekclub ‘t Ey. The show features American banjo player Nora Brown, Scottish singer-songwriter Kris Drever, multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Eli West, and fiddler/songwriter Laura Cortese.
Laura Cortese (The Dance Cards, Bright Light sessions) is an American songwriter and fiddler who might best be described as a sonic magpie: a curious and resourceful adventurer traversing great distances, collecting melodies and rhythms that glitter like jewels in the sun. In March 2024, 7 years after emigrating to Belgium, Laura Cortese launched a collaborative concert series bringing together four of the most sought-after and prolific folk musicians from both sides of the Atlantic for a unique collaboration. Weaving together original songs and traditional classics, Nora Brown (US), Kris Drever (Scotland), Eli West (US), and Laura performed six concerts around Belgium and recorded their last show in renowned Muziekclub ‘t Ey to share with you from the comfort of your home.
Musicians:Laura Cortese: violin, vocals
Kris Drever: guitar, vocals
Nora Brown: banjo, guitar, vocalsEli West: mandolin, guitar, banjo, vocals
Laura hopes this will become an annual series and is already working on editions for 2025 and 2026.
Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards
- Fiddle
- Folk
- Singer/Songwriter
Laura Cortese might best be described as a sonic magpie: a curious and resourceful adventurer traversing great distances, collecting melodies and rhythms that glitter like jewels in the sun. Driven by the gravitational pull of human connection, her tendency towards exploration and collaboration have led her into countless niches, each providing its own unique feather with which to decorate her distinct and ever-evolving sound. But all of these explorations have one thing in common: the power of strings. This may seem limiting to some. To her, it is anything but. “Strings are at the core of what I do,” she says. “Genre is secondary to that palate.”
With her band the Dance Cards, Cortese showcases all of her varied experience and expertise–as a master fiddler, an instructor, a leader, and a musical collaborator–using it to craft a new sound from whole cloth: a nearly symphonic hybrid of countless traditions and influences, full of layered vocal harmonies and rich interplays of virtuosic string instrumentation. Expanding on the boundaries of what an indie folk band can be, Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards take their extensive string music background, add their knowledge and appreciation of folk and roots music and incorporate an edgy pop sensibility.
